EXTREMISTS SHOULD LEAVE YOSEMITE ALONE

Yosemite National Park is a jewel of the national park system. But it’s not just a place of great beauty. It’s a place where visitors can rent bikes, ride horses and raft down the Merced River. They can swim in hotel pools in summer and ice skate in the winter at a rink in Curry Village.

But this doesn’t sit well with some environmentalists. More and more seem to think our natural wonders should be observed from a distance, as if they were still paintings. This “look but don’t touch” sentiment is behind a ridiculous National Park Service proposal to end bike, horse and river rentals, scrap ice skating and remove the swimming pools at the Yosemite Lodge and Ahwahnee Hotel. The proposed changes come after years of lawsuits by two small environmental groups that want to restore the park to its natural setting and reduce the human footprint even more from a national park that’s already 95 percent wilderness. The park service says the changes are no big deal because members of the public can just lug their own bikes and rafts to the park, if they so choose.

This is outrageous. California congressmen were right to heatedly denounce the plan at a recent House hearing. Yosemite is fine as it is. Environmental extremists should go peddle their lunacy elsewhere.